Here For The Echoes
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Set after Katherine has been sealed in the tomb. AU. Something is wrong with Damon. Elena desperately leads the fight to save him... both from the supernatural forces attacking him and, more importantly, from himself.
1. Tell me that everything is fine here

**Here For The Echoes | Part One**

by Waltzmatildah

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_You tell me that everything is fine here, and you can handle it..._

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It starts as a dull pounding behind his left eye. A pulsing ache that beats with a staccato tempo he thinks would probably mirror his heartbeat. If he still had one. If he still remembered what it felt like to have one.

It's oddly disconcerting

He tilts his head to the side, as though the angle might disperse the sensation, and is not entirely surprised when does no such thing.

He blames it on the scotch. On the pint of o-neg he had for supper. On Stefan.

He blames everything on Stefan.

(He blames everything on himself.)

.

.

.

The house is quiet. The house is always quiet.

The shutters on a window upstairs rattle out a vigorous protest against the prevailing winds as he pushes up from the leather couch. The abrupt change in altitude whites out his vision for an instant as his hands fly out in front of his face. Immediately on the offensive. The glass in his fist drops soundlessly to the rug at his feet. Bounces and rolls.

Out of sight, out of mind.

(As utterly forgettable as he has always been.)

He presses fingertips to his eyelids. Pushes as everything moves back into slow focus. The pounding headache intensifies a notch and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a little curious as to the cause.

Afterall, the last real headache he remembers having was sometime in March. Eighteen sixty four.

Rounding the arm of the couch, he flips a second glass to upright. Fills it to half way and figures, if it is the scotch, then he might as well keep on drinking.

.

.

.

Candlelight refracts through the crystal cut tumbler as the smooth liquid waves against inertia when he picks it up.

Drains it.

Thunder rolls around inside his skull. Matched only in intensity by the flash of lightening that forks, tree-like, across the horizon. The french doors behind him burst open and he's met with a black wall of rainwater and debris.

"Well, well, well, isn't this an interesting turn of events..."

The poised figure remains a tableaued silhouette against the endless night. She doesn't appear even remotely wary of his presence and if he could get everything into some kind of order in his head then he thinks this fact would be a lot more troublesome than it currently is.

"Damon." Her voice is like fingernails down a chalkboard. Tangles in nerve endings that dance along the length of his spine.

"Bonnie. Lovely weather we're having."

Hair haloes out behind her as the wind continues its impromptu solo. She ignores him. Steps across the threshold and into the relative calm of the grand room, presses the doors closed behind her and leans lightly against them.

"I was just getting a drink, can I interest you in something..._spicy_?" His euphamistic attempt at unconcerned nonchalance fools neither of them as he uses the counter top to right his increasingly unsteady balance.

"This isn't a social call, Damon."

He pours as he speaks, doesn't bother to turn and look at her while he does so, "How very disappointing."

.

.

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"Damon."

"I think we've covered that part already." He spins to look at her and the room spins with him, never quite manages to right itself again. His face contorts into a practised smirk as he notices she's getting frustrated with him. It's spelled out in the crease of her brow. Curled into the way she's standing, still pressed up against the glass.

"I've come to warn you." She's resigned, tired. "I don't know why I bothered-" Her boots sound against the hardwood as she turns back to doors she'd only just pressed to closed. Makes a move to open them again. Fingers poised above the handle.

"Warn me?" She's motionless, waiting for him to go on. He does, incredulous. "What could you possibly have to warn _me_ about?"

She sighs, the sound is sandpaper arcoss his eyelids. "I've been... out of town. Visiting family. I went to-" She cuts herself off. Deliberately bites her tongue, presses her lips into a thin line before shrugging it out. "Actually, you know what? It doesn't matter. Where I've been, it doesn't matter..."

"S'there a point to all this?" The pounding in his skull ramps up a notch or seven as the words trip off the tip of his tongue. He thinks if she can just get to the point already he can feed or drink or slam the back of his own head into the heavy wooden mantle.

Anything to shake it clear.

"If they find out I came there'll be trouble for me, you should know that. I'm risking a lot by being here..."

He grins. Cocks his head a little to the left. Raises an eyebrow to match. "That sounds positively... _ominous_..."

.

.

.

"They have plans for you." She drops the words at his feet. Even lowers her gaze there to watch as he struggles to pick them up; to gather them into something that might start to make some sense.

Fails. "Excuse me?"

Her words fill him. Inside to out. A bubbling form of panic that is almost as incomprehensible as it is foreign. The heels of his hands clamp desperately against his temples for a second and the white noise drops by degrees.

"Are you-"

"No." She cuts him off emphatically, shakes her head. "No, not me. They, the... the others. They have plans. For you." She's less sure of herself now. The fading scent of adrenalin, of power, slips steadily through the gaps between her fingers.

"Who are they?"

"It doesn't matter who they are. I just thought, well... I just thought you should know." She's backtracking. Knows beyond doubt that she's already said too much.

"Bonnie... _who are they_?"

"I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that they're powerful. So incredibly powerful. And they have plans to..." She brings her eyes up to meet his. It's the first time she's done this by choice, "_...reduce your effectiveness_."

Like it needs air quotes.

"Reduce my effectiveness?" He only just manages to clamp down on a laugh that threatens to bubble out; to betray him. "What is that even supposed to _mean_?"

"They know what you did. The part you played in Grams' death. You've made them-"

"That was _not_ my fault." He can feel his eyes slide around inside his head. Side to side to side to side. Wild. "That was not-. No. You can't-"

"Don't you get it?" She steps in front of him. Dares to raise her palms to his shoulders; to press him back a step, "It was _all_ your fault. All of it. And that's not even the point. They _think_ it was your fault. That's all that matters to them." Her mouth moves. Opens. Shuts. He loses her and then he gets her back...

.

.

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"They can't kill me."

"They can." She is sure of this. Her tone is adamant. Knowing. He shakes his head in protest. Defiant 'til the very end.

"No." The words are thick in his throat, he swallows around them as they fight for release. "They can't. There's a pact. We don't kill you, you don't kill us-"

"Damon, I said_ they can_, which is true. But they know about the pact, and they have every intention of honouring it."

"Then, I'm afraid your little story has lost me..." He shifts backwards, inches and feet until he's pressed against the back of the leather couch. Allows the high back to take some of his weight as he swirls the liquid amber in his glass.

(The indifference is feigned.)

"Listen to me." He doesn't remember stopping. "They have plans for you. To reduce your effectiveness. They're not going to kill you but, if my guess is correct, then they're not going to make it all that pleasant for you either..."

"Why are you telling me this?" The words tumble out on an exhale. His confusion is genuine. He can see that it shocks her as much as it shocks him in the way she stiffens at his tone.

"Honestly? I have no idea."

"What are they planning?" Insistent. Desperate.

"I have no idea about that either. They're very secretive."

"Then maybe you should _get_ an idea before I rip your pretty little head off-" He lurches to his feet. Scrambled. Disjointed. Only just manages to remain upright.

"But I _am_ sure things like _that_ will only make it worse. Or faster. Or bigger... To be honest, I really don't care."

Ah, the Bonnie that he recognises. Fire and ice and everything in between.

.

.

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"So," Numb fingertips drag across his forehead, an attempt to regain some semblance of focus, "When is operation _Lets Get Revenge_ scheduled to begin?"

She smiles at him knowingly, like they're entangled within an intricate game but only she has been given the rules of how to play. She's in front of him suddenly, rocking as she drags a manicured nail down the side of his face in a gesture that could be suggestive but absolutely is not.

"I think we both know the answer to that one, don't we, Damon?"

He can't see her then. The pressure of her palm as it cups his face is real enough but she might as well be miles and oceans and moutain ranges away. He morphs in an instant. Doesn't bother to bite back the desire to rip her throat out, leave her empty and emptying on the storm sodden ground.

He collides with something solid. Concrete. Stone, perhaps. Can't quite focus enough to join all the dots.

He is the one that is empty.

(This is nothing new.)

.

.

.

"God." His head lowers as his arms come up to cover it. To hold in what is surely about to explode. "What have you done to me?"

She laughs at his ineptitude; mocking, "I'm going now. Please don't tell anyone I came. Oh," She pauses then and he can hear her tapping one finger against the glass, "you should probably call Stefan-"

"Stefan? Why? What have they done to him?" His fingers scrabble for purchase against the rug beneath his knees. Nails torn, tearing. "Stefan!"

The sound of his plea echoes. Pathetic. He hates himself for it even as he can't bring himself to stop it.

"Hey, relax. Stefan is fine." Relief burns a path through his insides. Lights them up in a flash of bright white. "As far as I know, you're the only one they're interested in. For now. Just... call Stefan. He should be here."

"Bonnie! Bonnie, wait!"

The doors open again, hang limply in the still night air.

The storm is over.

(He can't help but to think it's only just begun).

.

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_To be continued..._


	2. Struggle to fight the feud within

**Here For The Echoes | Part Two**

by Waltzmatildah

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_Struggle to fight the feud within, to face what you've become..._

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The silence following Bonnie's melodramatic arrival and subsequent departure is suffocating. The wind, so determined to flatten a swath through the landscape only moments earlier, fades to barely a rustle of distant leaves and the floating shadow of cloud across moonlight.

He half expects the volcano she ignited in his skull to fade out following her retreat.

That it fails to relent even an inch has his hands curled to fists and pushing at his temples.

He's right where she left him. A pathetic heap on the floor, forehead pressed to solid wall. Three seconds and fighting from an attempt to slam his face through the rock. He drags his cell phone from his pocket and dumps it on the rug by his left knee. Gives himself a moment to contemplate her words. To weigh up the pros and cons of a phonecall to his brother.

To Elena.

Can't quite bring himself to give in enough to punch out the numbers.

And it all feels like surrender in the end anyway.

.

.

.

He makes it back to the couch. Manages to shuffle past the liquor cabinet and snag a new bottle on his way. Contemplates simply shattering the glass against his skull as he fumbles with the screw top for several blinks.

Forgoes a glass and drains the liquid straight from the narrow neck.

Figures alcohol poisioning has to be better than whatever unholy hell he's currently floating through.

The flames in the fireplace blur and bleed together before fading out. Minutes, hours, seconds, days pass. Scotch disappears down his throat. A chill settles deep in his bones. Uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than usual.

The grind of car tyre rolling over gravel is almost more than he can take but they're standing behind him then before he can do much of anything about it and so he slams his eyes to shut and grits his teeth and does his level best not to scream.

"And what have you kiddies been up to this fine evening?" Goes for default facetious and figures he almost pulls it off. "Murder and mayhem, I hope..."

"Hello to you too, _Damon_..." Pointed. Like somehow he already knows everything even though he doesn't actually know anything. At least, not yet. "Wait." There it is. The other shoe drops with a resounding thud. "What the hell happened in here?"

"I don't know what you're talking about..." He figures denial will work for about-

"Seriously, Damon. What the hell?"

- two point five seconds. It is painfully predictable that way.

"Just a spot of redecorating. Haven't you heard?" His voice is a low growl. Quieter than usual but more deliberate. Every ounce of determination he has funnelled desperately into sliding the words out in a way that won't raise the red flags to full mast before he's ready for them. Before his backup plan has been devised. Before some semblance of clawing control has been regained.

Convinced as he still is that he can handle this. Just... give him a minute to get his shit together and he'll handle it all.

_"Trashed is the new black..."_

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He pushes the bottle of scotch back between his lips. Clamps his teeth around the lip and tilts his head back to just before boiling point. Swallows desperately. Oblivious to the liquid that spills, slippery slick across his fingers. Traces a trail of least resistance to his elbow.

Pools, dark black, on the faded denim covering his right thigh.

"Enough with the Martha Stewart act, Damon. Have you just been sitting here drinking? By yourself? All night?"

Elena is yet to speak. He knows she is there, can sense the coiled way she is holding herself at Stefan's side. He doesn't need to see her to know exactly the way her shoulder will be angled in to his brother; the way her raised eyes, looking up through coal black lashes, will blink out a balanced rhythm.

A balanced rhythm that completely unbalances him.

.

.

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"_Au contraire_, dear brother..." He risks opening his eyes to cut short the steamtrain of his thoughts. The world cracks neatly in two. All thought of Elena vanishes.

It is surprisingly effective. Pain. He shudders, swallows, breathes despite the lack of any requirement for it.

"... I had a very interesting visitor... Although, admittedly, she did turn down my offer of a drink so, in that respect I guess you're not far from the truth..."

"A very interesting visitor? Do I know her?"

"Indeed you do. In fact, you both know her." Something shifts then. Tumbles end over end over end.

"Damon, what's going on?" There is spiked fear laced through her every syllable. Jarring distrust. It burns considerably more than perhaps it should. All things considered.

He forgets to expect little else.

"What do you mean?"

"Something's happened. I can tell. What's going on?" There's something else there now. In the way her words form and fall. It tastes a lot like concern in the back of his throat, coating his tongue, thick, and he has to swallow around it all to make it stop.

_Please, stop._

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"Damon?" His brother this time. The sound of his name from those lips, infinitely more familiar. He thinks they've both frozen where they stand. Mirrored tableaus of bewilderment and uncertainty.

"Oh, listen to you both. All scared and worried. I feel like I should be touched or something equally-"

"Damon, stand up." He'd laugh if he didn't think he'd cry as well.

"What? Why? You don't want that. I'm drunk, I'll probably-"

"Stand up and look at us."

There are cracks fast developing in his hastily constructed facade. Keeping the weight of the rushing water contained is an almost impossible undertaking.

And he has nothing left with which to push back.

"I can't."

Everything gives way with an ear splitting shriek then. Dust and molten debris swirling vociferously in the cavernous spaces where his heart and lungs used to live.

.

.

.

"What have you done?"

"What happened to you?"

In unison with everything except the underlying implication.

"Well, there's a telling little moment right there..."

Toy puppets on strings. Marionette-like as they bobble and jerk into scrambled position, hands and knees and unbridled terror at his feet.

"Damon, just drop the crap for a second and talk to us. What's going on? Who came here? What did they do to you? What did you do to _them_?"

He drops the bottle of scotch heavily to the cushions beside him, leans his head back against the couch. Lets heavy lids slide sandpaper closed over eyes that fail to focus anyhow.

"Argh. So many questions. One, we're having this lovely conversation. That's what's going on. Two, your dear friend Bonnie came here. Only she wasn't so dear and she wasn't so friendly and-"

"What? Bonnie was-" Elena's breathless panic threatens to undo the parts of him that he's only just managing to keep together at the seams.

"Do you want me to finish?" He tilts his head and smirks because practice tells him that is what's expected.

None of this is what's expected.

"You said Bonnie-"

"I _said_, do you want me to finish?" He takes her trembling silence as a yes. The heat from human hands that hover just inches from contact is almost overwhelming.

"Three," he continues, "I'm guessing it's a spell of some sort. That is what witches do isn't it? Spells and magic and all that hocus pocus. And four. Nothing. I didn't do anything to her. Oh, except kill her grandmother, apparently."

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.

.

Cotton wool and cumulonimbus clouds and he thinks he must have passed out somewhere along the line.

He's horizontal when he wakes, pushed to flat on the couch and with one eyelid forcefully dragged to open.

"_His pupils are fully dilated._" Words bubble up to him through a viscous fog.

"What the hell?" A barely whispered slur of sounds that bump over one another on the way out.

"Shhh. We're gonna fix this..." And she always was his one saving grace.

Stefan is rumbling in the background. Static white noise that grates against frayed nerves. He wants him to shut up. Wants him to get the hell out. Wants him to leave him all alone. But there's heat pressing up against his side and tentative fingertips twisted into the hair above his ear and more than anything else, he wants that to never end.

"We're gonna fix this..."

He doesn't believe her. She doesn't believe herself.

"_Elena_." Not Katherine. Elena. The chalk line that separates them fades more with each scuffed and stumbling pass.

"Shh. No. Stefan's calling everyone... There will be an answer for this." The waver in her voice more than gives away her uncertainty.

"First aid for vampires, huh. The Red Cross have courses in just about everything these days..."

She smiles in spite of herself, lights up for a thunder crack and he matches the moment with a smirk of his own.

.

.

.

"Bonnie's not picking up."

"Don't-"

"Shh, Damon. Wait." Like he has plans to up and leave anytime soon. "We have to go and find her, Elena. She'll talk to you."

Stefan is pacing. Punctuating each and every heavy step with the slap of his palm against his hip. It'd be comical if his own imminent demise wasn't the cause.

"Leave Bonnie-" He needs for them to know not to go after her. That she'll be no help. That she made her feelings on the matter more than crystal cut clear.

That this is so much more than just small-town witchcraft. But the words ebb and fade before they're even halfway to out loud and he's convinced they're no longer listening to him anyway.

Maybe they never were.

"Where do you think she'd be? Grab your coat, we can take my car."

"Wait. Stefan. What? You want to look for her right now? We can't-"

"Yes, right now. She needs to fix this, Elena"

"We can't leave him-"

"She can fix this, Elena, she can... We need to find her-"

Words bumble and fall. Like tropical rain on his up-turned palms.

"Then you go."

And even the weight of the air in the room changes in that loaded split second.

.

.

.

A beat. Another.

"What?" Confusion. And not all of it Stefan's as her words disorient him. Leave him reeling.

"I'm not leaving him-" She is defiant. This is not new.

That she is defiant for him most definitely is.

"Alaric's coming. So is Caroline."

And he thinks his brother still can't quite see to the end of the tunnel they're all in. Sounds echo from one surface to the next, impossible to tie down with any sense of definitive finality.

"No, you're not listening to me, Stefan. I don't care if they're coming, I'm not leaving him."

.

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_To be continued..._


	3. Straight to the heart, good luck

**Here For The Echoes | Part Three**

by Waltzmatildah

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_Straight to the heart, good luck, you're finished for sure... _

.

Time seems to burst into fragments. Incoherent; abstract as it jumps around him in leaps and scratches. Hours, days, minutes. He can no longer be sure.

Stefan slings him over his shoulder at one point. And he's too stunned by the frozen look of fear on Elena's face to do anything more than offer a cursory protest that barely makes it to audible anyway. Her fingers play across her lips, pull at the skin there. She's crying. Silent tears that drop from her chin and fall heavily to the hardwood at her feet with a thunderous clap that echoes through his ribcage.

The world slides all the way to the left then. And so far south that the endless white light becomes a welcome reprieve.

He wakes to darkness and echoes and ever present agony.

He does not wake to solitude.

"You need to eat something..." Fingers tap lightly against his wrist.

The thought sends a ripple of revulsion through him that he refuses point blank to acknowledge. Digs his fingertips into the tangled sheet instead and manages to bite out something predictably inappropriate and glib in response.

"You offering, babe?"

His voice betrays every desperate shred of panic that has filled him since Bonnie's departure. Flayed him to ruins in the presence of the one person he'd sworn would never bare witness to his failings...

"Damon, don't..." Her fingers are gone. Maybe they were never there.

She deserves better and he knows this like he knows she deserves better than _him_...

.

.

.

A lamp bursts to life in a far corner, bathes the room in a glow that burns his retinas to blackened ash. The groan trips from his lips before he has the sense to clamp it down.

Down. Down.

So far down.

"Damon." She's whispering but it's still nails across chalkboard. Powder white.

"Vervain." He grits the word out between teeth that grind viciously.

"What?" But she's no where near as confused as she's pretending to be. Of that he is certain.

"Please, Elena. _Please_..." He forces his eyelids to open, wide. Knows he needs all the superficial advantage he can get in the fight he can already feel building in the feet and inches of space between them.

He doesn't want the end. He just wants the end of ithis/i.

"No. No..." She doesn't pretend for long... Shock. Outrage. Knuckles in her mouth and head lolling. Side to side to side...

He pushes up from the mattress, fingers splayed, elbows locked. She's on him in seconds. Hands and words and big, brown eyes that threaten to undo him all over again.

"It's poison..."

"It'll kill you..."

"You can't..."

_"I won't..."_

And that last one could shatter his ribcage. If she meant it.

(He knows that she couldn't possibly...)

But it's too much now. Was too much too many days ago to count. And he may be weakened, shaking, but she's still no match for him.

And he'll never be a match for her...

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.

He makes it to the head of the staircase before her screams catch him up. Considers simply throwing himself over the side but is still lucid enough to reconcile the fact that the fifteen foot drop will end none of his problems.

And he never was one for symbolic martyrdom anyhow...

"_Stefan_." She's shrieking. A desperate panic that pierces the parts of him that are still functioning with some degree of normalcy. "Damon, no! Stefan, help me."

He laughs but doesn't bother to turn back.

"Make up your mind, _Katherine_..." He regrets the words as soon as they're out. Deflates as the air behind him falls to loaded silence.

"Why do you always do that?" Whispered. But she knows the answers. She knows them inside out. And so he doesn't bother to invent a lie.

Another one.

After all, she stopped believing in them months ago.

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.

.

Arms circle him from behind and he all but collapses into her as they slump to seated. He can hear the front door open. Close again. Stuttered footsteps over hardwood floor that hammer as heavily as her heartbeat. They'd been the only ones in the house but Stefan wasn't far.

Stefan is never far...

And he can't blame him for the complete distrust. It has been more than earned.

.

.

.

Stefan's response parallels Elena's. Only with a little less of the seizure inducing shrieks. He makes an deliberate effort to point this out. Plasters on a smirk that feels oddly unfamiliar by now and digs his fingernails into his palms.

A momentary repreive of sorts.

The answer is still no. And they still don't get it.

"I just..." he trails off because they're not listening. They're not even looking.

They devise a glorified suicide watch. He rolls his eyes and makes promises he knows they want to hear but will never believe.

_"We're fixing this, Damon..."_ A mantra mumbled many times over.

It falls on deaf ears. For there can be no fixing this.

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.

.

"Stefan is mad at you." It's a statement of fact. Not a question.

She shrugs. A brief up and down of her shoulders by way of a response. Doesn't even bother to look up. Her fingers are tapping out a tentative rhythm against her thigh, he counts the looping beat. One, two, five, nine... loses it again.

"I'm sorry."

He's not.

(Except maybe he really is this time...)

She shrugs again. A non answer.

"Elena..." The tapping continues. Thunderous drumbeats inside his shattering skull. "Seriously, you can call off the suic-"

"Why did you want the vervain?" She looks up as she speaks. Demands a response despite the fact that she'd all but refused him one.

He brings his knees up to his chest. A foetal position of sorts. "I just-"

"Because if you've given up on us already then..."

He gets stuck on the _us_ for a beat. Rolls the word around inside his chest to see what it feels like. To taste it just for a fleeting moment.

"... they're all down there right now you know. Researching. Stefan, Alaric, Caroline... me when we're not three quarters to convinced you're about to put a gun in your mouth."

Oh.

That 'us'.

He doesn't bother to point out that a gun in his mouth won't kill him. Her lips part. Fall closed again around a sigh.

"So," She's crying. He's not entirely convinced that she knows this. "I just want to know if we're wasting our time."

Matter of fact.

He feels ill. All the time. And maybe it's only been hours. Or days. But it feels like years and he thinks someone might have taken a meat mallet to his brain at some point because everything hurts. Everything. Constantly. Even his fingernails. And he's so goddamn _tired_ that, even though it's _not_ what he wants the vervain for, not really, the idea of going to sleep and never waking up again grows more and more appealing with each sliding second.

But she's crying...

She might even be crying for him.

And so he kisses her then, saltwater slick, because it is all he has left to give.

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.

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"Damon."

His name as an exhale of warm air.

"Shhhhhh... _please_." Fingers and thumbs and his lips, soft, against her ear.

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.

The house is a whirlwind of activity. Footsteps tap out patterns against hardwood and stone on the floors below. Muted voices float up staircases and through closed doors and they're never loud enough but they're always too loud just the same.

Elena rarely leaves. He's no where near brave enough to ask her why.

Or why now.

Or if the endless arguments that punctuate his dreams have anything to do with him.

She rarely leaves but when she does she always returns with yet another layer scraped loose. One more angle chiselled in, ten more grey shadows lurking over her shoulder.

And the only thing he does know with any degree of gut wrenching certainty is that, somehow, it will all come back to him. One more demise to add to the never-ending list of travesty he's spent the best part of a century and a half cultivating.

That she shall be his last seems oddly poetic.

(Katherine was his first. So he likes to think.

Or maybe he was hers... He can no longer decipher the difference.)

She curls up on the foot of his bed. Clamps raging hot fingers around his left ankle. Holds tight. His anchor. As though he'll up and float away while she's sleeping if she doesn't keep him grounded.

And she may be right.

He only just resists the urge not to kick her loose.

Tells himself it's for the best. It's for her. Manages to conjure a lie that even he almost believes.

.

.

.

"Bonnie's here..." Elena appears in his doorway, leans her weight against the frame.

He flinches. Visibly. Too tired and too numb to care enough to hide it.

"We have a plan."

Daylight has faded. Tick off another twenty four hours.

"We do?" The words catch at the back of his throat and he chokes around them. Trips, falls. She's beside him then, fingers threaded through his.

"We do." She nods. As though to convince herself more than anything else. "But there's a catch. Bonnie thinks she can break it, but she'll need some help and the people she needs help from, well they'll only help her if she gives them the moonstone."

"Katherine has the moonstone." He frowns. Can't quite put all the pieces together into a picture that makes sense.

"It's okay, we have a plan for that, too." And he already hates the hesitation in her voice. The implications hidden there.

"No." He drops her hand. Backs away a staggered step or seven.

"Damon, it's the only way."

"No. No, I won't let you."

"You can't stop me." The fact that she's right burns slow. And ice, ice cold.

.

.

.

He doesn't understand the plan. What they're attempting to fix. Why they're willing to risk so much for nothing.

For almost nothing.

"Stefan? What the hell are you thinking?" A chair is shoved at the back of his legs. He offers a show of resistance that he absolutely does not feel before sinking into it. Head in his hands. Eyes slammed to shut.

Tight.

The room is ominously silent. They have made their decisions.

His input is no longer required.

"What's going on?" He pushes back to staggered standing. Faces the line of them. Wild. Wired.

The tension in the room is palpable. Suffocating. Caroline shifts as he locks his gaze on her, figures she is the weakest link in this incongruous chain.

Except she's not.

She never was.

(It was always him.)

Stefan steps forward. Pushes strong hands against his chest.

"We're doing this, Damon." Nods once. Decision made.

"No." Adamant.

"It's too late for _no_. She's already on her way..."

He drags his eyes from Stefan's at that. Notices the room has emptied out.

The temperature inside his chest drops by degrees.

"What have you done?" His fingers wrap around his brother's jaw, angle his chin across to look at him. "Where is she? What the hell have you done?"

Stefan shrugs, shakes himself loose. Blurs into the endless oblivion.

And his wrist is in his mouth then. Stifling a scream.

Rage. Fear.

_Elena._

A heady mix of both.

.

.

_To be continued..._


	4. I think you're breaking

**Here For The Echoes | Part Four**

by Waltzmatildah

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_You're on the edge, I think you're breaking..._

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He follows after them at a staggered lope. Falls heavily to his knees more than once. Barely manages to regain shaky footing that is fading fast.

The inky black swallows him whole. Settles, cape-like, across the planes of his hunched shoulders. It's a trip that should take him minutes but the moon rises 'til it's high above his head and he calculates a distance that has him at not even half way there.

Figures that he's already hours, days, too many years too late.

.

.

.

He tumbles down the last of the wide, stone steps. An unceremonious arrival that bleeds his vision to black and grey and pale, pale pink.

His heartbeat echoes valiantly inside his chest. Rocks his body to the beat of a thousand drummers marching. A hacking cough floods the back of his throat with the copper tang of blood and sustenance.

His own.

The sensation is chilling.

"Elena..."

A resounding silence fills him to full and mostly overflowing.

_"Elena..."_

Hands and knees and skin stretched to too tight over fingers that claw at the chalky earth.

"Elena."

Defeated.

The tomb is closed and he struggles back in time to his last visit. Desperately searches through a catalogue of memories that have somehow tumbled, dust and debris, to the feet and inches of space that is just out of his fingertipped reach.

Was it closed the last time he was here? Is this new? Is she in there? Are they both in there together?

A low growl rips through his abdomen, has him staggering to upright and lurching towards the heavy barrier. Shoving it aside and then stepping back before the effort required to carry out the motion catches up to him.

Almost drops him back to his knees.

"Elena!"

.

.

.

She appears slowly. Mirage-like.

Sad and scared.

She looks worn down, tattered and torn. And he can't help but wonder just how much time has passed.

Just how significant his failings have been...

"Damon?"

The word trips and falls from her tongue. Scratches at his fast evaporating resolve. Fills his cavernous insides with an insistent hum that threatens to tear away at all his carefully constructed seams.

"Elena, I'm-"

She laughs then. Cuts him off sharply. A vicious bark that scalds a path down his spine.

"Oh, Damon." Her mocking mirth sends dust motes skidding and sliding. "Look at you, all _Elena_. How disgustingly pathetic..."

_Oh._

_Katherine._

He drags hands that shake and slide across his earth stained face. Scrubs viciously. Half wonders how hard he'd need to rub to erase himself completely.

"Where is she?" A rekindled brand of panic swells. Forces the air out of his lungs in a rush that has him staggering back a step or several.

Shoulders shrug, head tilts to the side, "How am I supposed to know?"

The implied; _why am I supposed to care?_ is received, loud and clear.

He doesn't believe her. Not for a heartbeat.

"Where _IS_ she?"

She's leaning causally against the stone wall. Just the wrong side of the sealed entrance. Tantalizingly close. A deliberate ploy, of that he is most certain.

"Best guess? She's with Stefan. At least..." she lifts her eyes to stare up at him through ink black lashes, "... that's where_ I'd_ be if I were her..."

.

.

.

He tries once more. Musters steel and vemon and fire and ice and spits the words at her feet.

_"Where is she?"_

"Well, clearly she's not here is she?"

"Where's the moonstone?"

"Why?"

He coughs, swallows more of his own blood and fear.

"_Where_ is the _moonstone_?"

"In a safe place." She's examining her nails. Not even looking at him. His desperate fury threatens to explode him to shattered shards at her feet.

"I can't- Can you-" He stops and starts. Trips over the words that rumble around inside his skull. That fight for position against the ever present agony that has taken up residence there.

"Look. She's not here. She hasn't _been_ here. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea where Stefan is. Though, seriously, fig-"

"She was coming here. She said she was-"

"Well, she lied."

"No." His head is shaking wildly. Side to side to side in adamant defiance. "No. Stefan said-"

"Then Stefan lied. _Someone_ lied. She's not here, Damon. Though this conversation would be infinitely more entertaining if she were..."

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.

.

He's on his knees now. Empty and heavy and hollow and sinking all in the same shattered exhale. Can't quite remember how he even got to there in the first place.

He lifts his head. Feels the vertebrae in his neck shift and slide at the jerked movement.

And Katherine is right where she's always been.

Ahead and above and always just out of reach.

"What the hell have they done to you anyway?"

The bored exasperation in her voice is coloured by a layer of something that he can't quite bring himself to name.

Something that might taste a lot like concern probably does.

"Damon, what have they done to you?" Softer this time. A voice that isn't really hers anymore but he wonders if it might have been. Once.

The reverberating agony is wearing down his newly constructed defences.

One hundred and fifty years and now...

This.

She slumps to seated, eye to eye. Presses her palm flat against the invisible wall that stands between them.

That has always stood between them.

"Let me look after you..."

And it's not only his skull that might crack neatly in two.

"Don't. Please. _Please..._"

She slides the tip of one finger down the surface of the spell's creation. "Baby, please... Let me make it all better..." Doesn't stop 'til her hand is fisted in the rough ground, just inches from his and pleading.

And it's everything that he's been waiting for. Everything that he thought he could ever want. But he was nothing to her for a century.

Nothing.

_Nothing._

_Nothing._

He scrambles back from the entrance, crab-like and clawing. Doesn't stop 'til his back meets solid stone. Uses it hastily as a crutch to support his own dimished resolve.

She's laughing again. At him and for him and; "My God. You really are a whole new level of pathetic now, aren't you?"

She stands, raises her arms above her head and leans forward against them.

"You know she's dead, don't you-" He stiffens but doesn't speak. Can't speak. "At the end of all this, no matter which way it plays out, the only possible conclusion is the death of the doppelganger. And I know I, for one, am quite looking forward to it."

.

.

.

He makes it back to the surface. The sky is beginning to brighten. The moon no longer hung in position high above his head.

Katherine's words tumble around inside his chest. The struggle to breathe air in and around them is exhausting. Destroying.

_She lied._

_She's dead._

_Let me look after you..._

_You're pathetic..._

_You're nothing..._

_You're nothing..._

_She's dead._

He thinks he gives up in that moment. Something in him shifts to sideways and down and the desire to right it all again evaporates in a fleeting heartbeat.

He wonders if this is what dying feels like.

Slow and excruciating.

No gunshot wound to the chest to sever his misery this time.

The boarding house might as well be on the other side of the country for all the reserves he has remaining to drag himself back there.

He works his ring down to the last knuckle. Lets it slip and slide the rest of the way to off without hesitation. Threads his hands through the grass beneath him and settles in to wait.

Feels his remaining fight leech out and into the cold ground. It's an ending so far shifted from what he wants. From what he's always dreamed would be his one moment of glory.

Manages to reconcile his defeat with the knowledge that ending all of this will bring Elena a moment of blissful repreive.

.

.

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A light goes on. His eyes blink to open and alert.

More awake than he's felt in years.

The back of his left leg is on fire. The first reaches of the early morning sun have finally found his shallow grave.

The ferocious burn whites out his vision and the sensation is horrifyingly familiar. But the horizon slides back into focus with a resounding clatter that has him sifting through the matted grass for his ring before scrambling for shade and shelter at a blur.

He pushes the safety net he'd managed to snag back into place. Flexes his fingers around the weight of it and draws in a solidifying breath.

A familiar exhaustion settles deep in his bones. A permanent weariness that he doubts all the sleep in the world could ever hope to cure. But the skull shattering agony is gone.

Gone with a completeness that has him wondering if it was ever really there in the first place.

Possible explanations play out, movie-like. Each conjured scenario more horrifying that the last as Katherine's words grate across nerves that are still more than a little red raw.

_She's dead..._

The realisation that it's probably true has him turning wildly in the direction of the boarding house. In the direction of answers he doesn't think he'll ever be brave enough to hear.

.

.

.

He's just inches from the front door when it flies open with a lightening crack.

He skids to a stuttered stop. Breathless, dizzy.

"Elena?"

"Damon!" Her excitement in that split second is genuine and the moment shifts the ground beneath his feet. She skips a step and he's three quarters to convinced she's about to throw herself into his arms when a voice over her shoulder stills her to rock solid in front of him.

"Damon?"

Stefan appears in the shadows then, "What the hell took you so long?"

He shrugs evasively because there's something off about this entire scenario. They're not surprised by his appearance, but oddly excited instead, and he's not sure what the correct answer to his brother's question actually is just yet.

He steps around them both and strides with a feigned purpose into the depths of the house.

Stills to rock solid himself at the scene that greets his return.

They're lined up, soldier-like, eerily reminiscent of his last encounter with them. Bonnie is here this time, though. Shoulder to shoulder with Caroline, their fingers twisted together in knots and he can't help but think that it's not over yet.

Whatever this hell has been, it's not over yet...

.

.

.

"Don't you get it?" They're all seated now. Everyone except for him. They've slumped into position at various points around the room while he paces erratically between them all.

"It was never about Elena... It was always about you..."

"No." He shakes his head with a fresh determination. Presses fingers to his lips to push back the unholy screams that are steadily building up behind his teeth.

"Think about it, Damon." He whips around 'til he's face to face with Bonnie. Almost loosens his grip on the screams for just long enough to remind her that she started it all in the first place. "Why would my family build something into the spell that would endanger Elena? Why would Stefan let her go anywhere near that tomb to get the moonstone?"

It didn't make sense to him at the time. He remembers that it didn't make sense to him at the time. Them risking everything to save-

"You _tricked_ me?"

The heavy sound of puzzle pieces sliding into place.

"Damon?"

"No. Stop... I don't- You mean... you all knew? You all knew what was going on?"

His switch as been flipped and his default 'off' seems so desperately out of reach. He wants to be angry or, better yet, he want to be nothing at all, empty and emptying. Like before. But she's flipped his switch and worn him down to a point of no return.

"It was the only way, Damon. It was the-"

There can be no returning from this.

"You should have _told_ me." He spins to Elena, thrumming with a tension that he could never know the words to describe, "You, you should have _told_ me. I thought-"

"I know what you thought. It was the only way, Damon. And I'm so sorry it had-"

"Stop. Just... Katherine was right. She said you lied and I didn't believe her but she was right. The one time, the _one_ time I don't listen to her... and she's finally telling the truth."

He laughs. It's bitter and hollow but oddly unfamiliar. Everything is coloured now. Thoughts and emotions and subtle variations of what was.

What will never be...

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_To be continued..._


	5. It's sweet at the bitter end

**Here For The Echoes | Part Five**

by Waltzmatildah

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_It's sweet at the bitter end..._

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The sleep that he so desperately craves eludes him once more and when the tentative knock of knuckle against heavy wood splits the still night into shards it is a more than welcome distraction.

He pulls the door towards him without bothering to check the identity of his late night visitor. Realises his mistake almost immediately and stills to motionless.

"Damon?"

The sound of his name is carried through the gap on the back of a cool wind that has developed sometime in the preceding hours. He gives himself a moment. A deep breath. A fleeting tap of forehead against wall to steel his resolve.

"Elena." He swings the door open elaborately. Plasters a wide grin on his face that only slips twice before righting itself as he walks back into the dimly lit room. "Lovely night for it."

The small talk is like splintered glass under his nails. It's been less than forty eight hours. Just enough time for all the building blocks to slot neatly into place.

They tell a compelling story.

"Stefan's hunting if you're-"

"I know."

He grins. Shakes his head. "Of course you do."

"Damon, don't."

He slides into position on the couch, crystal cut tumbler filled to shallow in one hand. Tilts his glass in the direction of where she's still standing.

"Cheers."

"Damon." The sigh in the syllables is barely hidden, "Can we talk?"

"What could we possibly have to talk about, Elena? Oh, I know...actually," he pauses for dramatic effect, "I'll start."

He twists where he's seated so he's facing her. Narrows his eyes into a shape that feels disconcertingly uncomfortable but gratifyingly familiar nonetheless.

"First we can cover how you let me kiss you. How you kissed me back. And slept in my bed. And made me..." The words fall away then. She made him lots of things, she still does. None of which he'll ever have the strength to verbalise. "Then you concocted this elaborate plan to have me basically lose my mind over you. And then you lied to me about it.

"Maybe we can talk about _that_."

She blinks back at him brightly. She's crying and his insides twist. He leans his head forward 'til it's pillowed on the back of the couch and sighs. The sound is like the weight of a thousand avalanches tearing at his skin. "I didn't mean... crap. Don't cry. Elena, I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"You think I _wanted_ to go along with their plan?" Her voice is sharp and sure all of a sudden. Resolute. "You think I've _enjoyed_ these past few days?"

"No. Elena, that's not what I-" And he can't for the life of him figure out how he has suddenly become the bad guy in all of this.

Figures though, that it's probably easiest that way.

Doesn't bother to remind her about the blood and the agony and the fact that it wasn't exactly a piece of cake for him either.

.

.

.

He tugs at her hand. Pulls her closer; over the back of the couch and into his lap. Settles her head against his chest and wonders what letting go again will feel like.

"So, the spell had some sort of 'get out of jail free' clause built into it, but it wasn't really a 'get out of jail free' clause because, to make it viable, you had to basically... well, let's just say there was no collecting two hundred dollars on the way past..." She uses the back of her hand to swipe at tears that haven't quite come to a stop, "... and it had to be about someone else, you couldn't just be doing it for yourself, to make it stop, that was the hardest part, you know..."

He knows. Nods minutely and tilts his head back to drain his drink.

"How did you know it would work?"

"Honestly? We didn't. But it was all we had and, well... the alternative wasn't really an option was it?" She tilts her head up at him, her hair casts a shadow he thinks he could hide behind for centuries.

"You mean twenty four hour suicide watch wasn't as much fun for you as it was for me? I'm shattered."

"Would you-"

"Don't. Seriously, Elena. Don't even go there..."

She nods, focuses her attention on the back of his hand. Traces the veins that thread a pattern across the smooth skin.

"But you took your ring off."

"I know. I was there, remember?"

"Why?"

"Why? _Why?_ You really don't know the answer to that question by now?"

She shrugs around a sigh and the movement engrains itself somewhere into the deepest parts of him.

"I guess I do. I guess I just want to hear you say it."

He threads his fingers through her hair, pulls the side back and tucks it behind her ear. "But what would it change? If I said it? What would it change?"

"Everything. Nothing. I don't know." She shrugs again and the strands fall back into place across her face.

"Yes, you do. You love him. Hell, even _I_ kinda tolerate him enough to not want to do this to him. Which, also, your fault by the way..."

She grins at him, a sly mix of sadness and regret. And he thinks he can probably live with that for now.

"You should go before he gets back. Or at least go into his room."

"He's not stupid, Damon. You said yourself that you heard the arguments..."

"I know he's not stupid. Not most of the time anyway. But you love him and the least we can do is not rub in his face the fact that you love me, too..."

"Oh!"

She stands then. Hands on her hips for a fleeting second before snatching a cushion and hefting it playfully at his head.

"Oh, really? I do, do I?"

"Well, maybe not yet... but you will eventually. It's inevitable really..."

.

.

.

She turns toward the stairs, makes her way up the first two before swinging back in his direction suddenly. "Damon?"

"Mmmm?"

"I want you to know, I really am- I really am sorry. And I really was terrified something bad was going to happen to you, or that you were going to hurt yours-"

"Elena, It's fine."

"No. No, it's not. I was selfish. And I let them use your feelings for me against you and-"

"Elena, seriously. It's fine. It wasn't fine. At the time it was so, incredibly far from fine... but it's over now and I understand why you did it and seriously, it's fine."

He figures if he says the words often enough they might just start to resonate within him as something near to the truth.

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_The End_


End file.
